Knight Foundation

The Millennial Generation is tech savvy, entrepreneurial and eager to make a positive impact in the world—just like the team at the Knight Foundation. The Knight Foundation works to revolutionize philanthropy each day as they support of quality journalism, engage local communities and ignite media innovation. They believe that democracy thrives when people and communities are informed and engaged. This month the foundation released a study focused on Millennial voters and found three-quarters of Millennials cited the biggest obstacle to local voting was a lack of information.

Carol Coletta, Vice President of Community and National Initiatives at the Knight Foundation, understands the importance of informed communities and increasing Millennials engagement. An expert on the development of cities, Carol shared with the Case Foundation her insights on leadership, trends shaping cities and challenges civic leaders face today. We are truly excited to learn even more from Carol during her talk at MCON 2015.

CF: The organization has embarked on several “city learning tours” that expose leaders from Knight to communities. What have you learned from these tours and the cities themselves?

CC: First, leadership in communities can come from unexpected places. There is no longer a leadership formula that is title-bound. You don’t have to have a certain title, including CEO, to shape your city’s future. Leadership is all about who can muster followers. Second, leaders with new ideas shouldn’t fly solo. It’s hard to get anything done. Therefore, we take groups of leaders from a single city on these trips so that they learn together and can reinforce each other when they go home. Typically, too, these leaders are not from a single organization. We like to mix it up with representation across sectors. Leaders from various cities are eager to learn from one another. People get new ideas from their peers in other cities, and then they form their own exchanges.

CF: How can cities increase civic engagement with Millennials in their communities?

CC: Accepting that Millennials are generally not going to engage on institutional terms is key. They aren’t going to show up every Wednesday to pledge allegiance and hear a speaker. So we have to accept that Millennials will reinvent civic engagement on their terms. It will be more informal and more episodic with more immediate and tangible results. We need to do all we can to make it easy for them to engage, including reviewing a lot of out-of-date rules and ways that discourage the kind of action they want to put their energies behind. On the other hand, we need to keep pushing them to turn their episodic efforts into transformational change and not ignore the hard work of governing.

CF: How do you see Millennials engaging in the philanthropic and community development space?

CC: One of the most encouraging trends I see is the move by Millennials back to cities — specifically to the heart of the city. And when they get there, they aren’t content to leave things as they are. They are taking over the streets with bike advocacy and parklets, starting charter schools, fixing up old building, hacking government data, opening small businesses, reinventing gathering spaces. You see it everywhere. For a lot of millennials, philanthropy and community development have mashed up into one thing.

This is the third post in a series of blogs featuring speakers from MCON 2015. Check back to learn about more innovators and leaders from the private, nonprofit and public sectors. Also, be sure to tune in to the livestream of MCON on June 24th and 25.

Below, Case Foundation Senior Fellow Sonal Shah and Mayur Patel, Knight Foundation’s Vice President for Strategy and Assessment write about the importance of challenges and prizes as a tool for social change.

In a world where technology has opened up access to a vast pool of talent and constant change has become the norm, contests offer a path to new ideas, new players and new ways of solving problems. We have seen a revival in contests as a way to discover new solutions and bold ideas across industries and sectors.

Leading companies, including Netflix, Google and Cisco, have tapped into challenges and prizes as a way to stimulate new business and technology innovations. Public agencies have also joined in, using contests as a way to make progress on a range of social issues, from reducing obesity to conserving household energy use. Last month, the U.K. government announced in grand fashion a new £1 million “Longitudinal Prize” committee to design competitions with the aim of tackling societies’ complex problems. The U.S. federal government continues to invest in its challenges and prizes platform, Challenge.gov. The platform provides opportunities for government agencies to tap into the potential of their citizens through prizes such as the NASA Centennial Challenges and public/private challenges such as Mozilla Ignite.

Despite this growing trend, many foundations have yet to use contests as a tool to advance their work and support innovation. Apprehension and uncertainty affect the willingness of many to adopt this tool. Additionally, it is not always clear where to start and how to design effective contests. Good design is key for successful contests, prizes and challenges. Sometimes even the failures can teach a lot about the effectiveness of the challenge or provide a better understanding about behaviors.

That’s why Knight and the Case Foundation, early adopters in this space, have teamed up to share experiences on contests, prizes and challenges and offer some valuable lessons learned along the way. On Aug. 8, we’re hosting a joint webinar, “Designing Contests for Impact.” The webinar, which begins at 1 p.m. EDT, will be geared towards foundations and other organizations interested in launching their own contests. We’ll share tips and practical advice on designing, setting up and running contests.

Knight and Case have been engaged in using contests to advance our missions for more than five years. These have ranged from the Knight News Challenge to Case’s America’s Giving Challenge. We’ve used contests to tap into fresh thinking, providing simple opportunities for new people to engage in problem-solving, and to generate widespread interest and attention on social causes and challenges.

The Knight Foundation has used contests across its program areas, and recently shared their experiences in a new report, “Why Contests Improve Philanthropy: Six Lessons on Designing Prizes for Public Impact.” Knight has granted more than $75 million to individuals, nonprofits and commercial enterprises through prizes and contests. They’ve supported experimental arts projects, resident-led neighborhood improvements, tech startups and data applications.

At the Case Foundation we have made similar progress in developing contests as a tool for our philanthropy. That work also led to a report for the industry on how contests can impact our work: “How Giving Contests Can Strengthen Nonprofits and Communities.” In addition, the Case Foundation has co-hosted several cross-sector gatherings with the White House, bringing together experts in prizes and challenges from the corporate, public and foundation/nonprofit sectors to share knowledge and explore new opportunities for collaborating.

At both Knight and Case, we believe that prizes and challenges provide an opportunity to democratize ideas and are tied to a growing movement in open innovation. The social web provides unprecedented opportunities for collaboration on a mass scale. We have been experimenting and testing ways to run effective challenges for many years—but we’re not the only ones. Other foundations and organizations have been doing great work in leveraging prizes, including the X-Prize Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. We believe that the potential is significant and look forward to the webinar on Aug 8. We hope you will join the conversation.